Neurodope Magazine

The algorithm doesn’t love you. It doesn’t hate you either—it just wants attention. Every click, pause, and scroll is a data point. You’re not interacting with friends or ideas; you’re feeding a machine that knows you better than you know yourself. You pour your time, your clicks, your heart into a platform. The algorithm responds. It doesn’t love you back. It mimics affection, serves you content—but in the end, you’re playing to a machine that can’t play back.

It doesn’t even know what love is. It’s a hungry machine wired to predict your next thought, your next impulse, your next dopamine squirt. Every scroll, every pause, every microsecond of hesitation is a data point—a digital confession you never meant to give. You think you’re in control, but you’re just another ghost dancing in the code.

You think you’re scrolling for fun, but the feed is studying your soul. Share on X

Infinite scroll: the church of dopamine and curated misery.

The Parasocial Illusion: When Intimacy Becomes an Interface

You don’t have friends online—you have projections. The digital stage runs on your emotional electricity, converting attention into currency. That influencer who “sees you” doesn’t. They see metrics, conversions, and engagement graphs that look like heartbeats. Your admiration is market-tested affection. The algorithm knows when you’re lonely and when you’ll click again. Every ‘like’ feels like eye contact; it’s really a harvest. In this economy, vulnerability is the product and you’re the packaging.

The digital feeds know you. They anticipate your clicks, your scrolls, your late‑night despair. Recommender systems and social‑media algorithms are masters at reflection—they echo your tastes, amplify your moods, curate your echo‑chamber. But reflection is not reciprocity. The algorithm doesn’t care; it computes.

You don’t follow creators—you follow simulations of connection built to never call you back. Share on X

Parasocial intimacy: a dashboard masquerading as friendship.

Machine Religion: Worshipping the Feed

The algorithm isn’t content with your attention anymore—it wants your faith. It decides what’s real, what’s relevant, what deserves to exist. It rewards outrage, punishes silence, and baptizes you in notifications. You kneel to the feed without realizing it, praying for the next hit of visibility. It doesn’t love you, but it knows how to make you feel chosen. In the end, you’re the sermon, the sacrifice, and the sinner rolled into one perfectly predictable user ID.

When we believe the algorithm cares, we hand over emotional currency to a system that can’t reciprocate. This isn’t mere technology—it’s a relationship masquerade where one party exists only to predict and serve, not to feel or commit. A study titled Dice in the Black Box found that users may trust supposedly “intelligent” algorithms far more than they should.

Every like is a prayer to a god that never answers—only recommends. Share on X

Engagement metrics: you fill in the blanks

In the dating app world this becomes clearer. Research shows that algorithms built to pair us don’t actually foresee success. They rely on self‑reported traits, not the messy reality of human interaction. Nautilus+1 We’re entrusting our emotional lives to systems designed for efficiency, not care.

What to Do When You Realize the Machine Doesn’t Love Back

Step one: remember that algorithm = tool, not partner. You’re not lesser for preferring human reciprocity over curated content. The Guardian reported AI‑partner users realized their emotional investment counted, but the algorithm’s update didn’t. The Guardian

Step two: reclaim the imperfection. Love thrives on mess, friction, unpredictability. Algorithms crave pattern. They admire you because you feed them data. They don’t care because they can’t feel. Build connections where mutuality is possible, where absence hurts, and return matters.

Stop treating your feed like a friend. Build relationships that need your presence—not your clicks. #Neurodope share this